- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Serpent's Tail; First Edition edition (5 Nov 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1852428651
- ISBN-13: 978-1852428655
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.2 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 302,681 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Billie Morgan
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
?My name is Billie Morgan. And I am a murderer.? Billie is in her forties, running a little jewellery shop in Bradford, watching over her godson Natty, trying to live a quiet life, trying to forget the past. Because Billie has a lot of past to forget. She was a biker chick, one of the Devil's Own, real hardcore seventies Angels, speed and acid-fuelled road demons. She lived a life that was hurtling out of control and it ended in murder. Now, years later, she has to face the consequences. Beautifully written, dark but never despairing, Billie Morgan is a perfect fusion between social realism and classic noir; a powerful, passionate novel about an inability to wipe evil from the slate of our lives. Taut like a Greek tragedy, the book is a moving, empathetic account of a woman?s heroic attempt to escape her destiny.
About the Author
Joolz Denby was born in 1955 to an SAS father and a glamorous mother. She is an internationally respected poet, spoken-word artist, curator, illustrative artist, tattooist and photographer. She is the award-winning, Orange-nominated author of the novels Stone Baby, Corazon, Billie Morgan, Borrowed Light, and five collections of poetry and short stories. She married an outlaw biker - a member of the Satan's Slaves - at 19 then after leaving that world, went on to spend the next 26 years writing, performing, working and touring with cult underground rock bands New Model Army and New York Alcoholic Anxiety Attack.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
YOU KNOW, the fact is I have no bloody idea why I'm doing this. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
YOU KNOW, the fact is I have no bloody idea why I'm doing this. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Joolz Denby has the amazing talent of leading you into the world of her characters and making you care about them, making you feel what they feel, smell what they smell. The despair and mental torment in this suffered by Billie Morgan become real to you.
This is the kind of story that has no happy ending, just a kind of coping. It makes you glad that you are who you are - makes you realise that your own life is not so bad after all... You may not like your job, you may have big debts, various problems - but at least you aren't a character in this book, for that would be real cause for complaint.
I read my first Joolz Denby because of her New Model Army connections. I now read her because she is herself and I love her books.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As with Joolz's previous two novels, I could not put this down until I had finished it. The thing that strikes me with Joolz's writing is that the characters are like people that you know, your friends, enemies, and in the case of Billie's mother - my mother. This story is so well written that you will really care about Billie, and like me, continue reading to find out what happens to her.
On first reading, I found this darker than Corazon or Stone Baby, I felt the hopelessness of Billie's life as one thing lead to another, with a sense of inevitability about it all. Don't want to say much more so as to not give any of the story away.
I would thoroughly recommend thie book to anyone that has read and enjoyed Joolz's work before, and if you have not, then this is a perfect place to start - once you've read this one you'll be back for the others!
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Joolz Denby is a poet and speaker and this shines through her gorgeous prose. Her descriptions of Bradford are both beautiful and real, she evokes the city so well, in all its grimy reality. Indeed the city itself is almost a character in the book. Knowing Bradford fairly well it felt like she was describing a relative who can be sometimes embarrassing but occasionally brilliant.
Although the book has been put into the Crime genre it is so much more than that. The voice of the book is Billie Morgan, named for Billie Holiday by her father. Billie grows up in Bradford in the 70s and gets involved with a Biker Gang. This leads to a murder. The novel is told as a confessional leading the reader slowly to understand how the murder happened and why. Joolz' descriptions of the intricacies of family relationships are superb. You really feel that you can get under the skin of the characters - all of which have huge but loveable flaws. The overriding feeling I had when reading this novel was that this really happened and that the characters really do live in Bradford. It is shocking, devastating, fragile and real. I don't often re-read books but this is one I could read again.
Here's a taste of the prose to whet your appetite (on Bradford):
"Oh sure, it's a poor place; when the textile trade all but died poverty crept in on naked, rotting feet and soured things; clabbered the milk in babies' mouths and put a blighted fury in our young men's hearts that leads them to rash and brutal acts...But it's not grey; it's not dull - it's as fiery and drenched with colour as a Turner painting. It's a stone maze; a trap for the unwary - I'm not surprised poor old Londoners get culture shock..."
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
The Devil's Own?
Joolz Denby is a Bradfordian who has been around on the poetry scene since the late seventies. Her poetry is a bit of an acquired taste and I feel this novel comes into the same... Read more
Published on 15 Sep 2009 by Eileen Shaw
Pacy and gritty page turner
Billie Morgan is a pacy and gritty page-turner about a grown up ex-biker at a turning point in her life. Read more
Published on 20 Nov 2008 by Jaybird
This book takes me back a few years.
Its over, Billie Morgan is finished.
I have finished reading this book and I am breathless with wonder, the author delivers as promised. Read more
I have finished reading this book and I am breathless with wonder, the author delivers as promised. Read more
Published on 16 Sep 2007 by Andrew Barton
gripping, terrifying and brilliant
This is my favourite of Joolz's books so far; it's just amazing. One has real problems putting down one of Joolz's books, although I often find I am practically reading through... Read more
Published on 16 Oct 2006 by JCH
Great book
This really is a very well worked book. It really is very emotional at times but it is just that power that makes the book so great. Read more
Published on 24 July 2005 by totnes_nigel
original, compelling, thought-provoking writing
Why aren't more people raving about this book yet? A tensely-written, utterly compelling study of it's protagonist's tormented state of mind - one of those books that keep making... Read more
Published on 10 Jan 2005
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